My Brazilian Sister-in-Law: Culture Clashes Between ‘Brother’ Nations
An example of how expectations of others are almost always distorted
It has been over a year since my husband’s brother returned from Brazil with more than just a suitcase. Along with him came his future wife and a dog in the plane’s cargo hold. It had been his second trip across the Atlantic Ocean.
The first happened about a year and a half earlier, during a pandemic, in a situation that we all thought was inconceivable.
My brother-in-law is one of those people we tend to see as predictable. He is not much into adventures, lives a quiet life, and, until recently, lived in his parents’ house even though he was over forty years old.
Personally, I always found this strange, inappropriate, and almost immoral: like an incomplete adult who missed fundamental stages of growth and would never have the chance to experience them.
An unambitious adult with the same job for over 20 years, earning minimum wage, and whose interests remained at the level of a teenager stuck somewhere in the late ’80s: a fan of collecting football cards, albums, stacks of CDs, or rock band T-shirts.
One could sum up almost his entire identity to little more than this.
When he met a…
